When the Taiping Army was strong, whether it was the Jiangnan Battalion, the Jiangbei Battalion or Zeng Guofan, the local regimental exercises pulled up by Li Hongzhang were all pressed to the ground by the Taiping Army and rubbed wildly. Xiang Rong, the commander of the Jiangnan battalion, was killed in battle, Zeng Guofan was also beaten twice to commit suicide, and Li Hongzhang was even more beaten to the ground, and he couldn't get along in his hometown, so he went to Zeng Guofan.

Why did the Taiping Army suddenly fail to defeat Zeng Guoquan?

Not so "suddenly". After the Tianjing Incident in 1856, the Taiping army had already begun to weaken due to civil strife.

Although the new Taiping generals Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng gradually resumed their offensive against the Qing army in 1857, and won military victories such as the first defeat of the Jiangbei Jiangnan camp, the second Jiangbei camp, the Sanhe victory, and the second Jiangnan camp. However, the Taiping Army could not change the crisis of internal and external troubles.

Internally, the Taiping Army brothers turned against each other, and the situation of partisan strife was grim. In addition, the generals were greedy for pleasure and separated from the masses, which made people's hearts scattered.

Externally, the Taiping army faced a more cunning enemy. The Hunan army and the Qing army led by the Zeng family began to fight with the Taiping army. Zeng Guofan's stubborn and dumb war was a kind of war of attrition. The Hunan army had the support of the entire imperial court and foreigners behind it, and the material resources were continuously transported to the front line. Although the Taiping Army was located in a rich area in the south, it had a limited chassis and years of war (foreigners also began to boycott him), so they could not collect much food tax at all. If the Taiping army continues to fight like this, it will definitely become weaker and weaker.

Wars are fought for money, and if you don't have money, you still have to fight a hair.

Of course, the Taiping Army also had a way to break the tactics of the Hunan Army, that is, what Li Xiucheng said, "let the city not go". This is also the guerrilla warfare and movement warfare that our party has fought in the past, and it does not fight for the gains and losses of one city or one place. The Taiping army could go wherever it could go, "grab" it to, and fight until Beijing was victorious.

However, Hong Xiuquan disagreed, so he guarded his Tianjing and did not move. The Hunan army began to "encircle and send reinforcements" against Tianjing, and the Taiping army began to be busy "relieving the siege of Beijing"... If Hong Xiuquan had the courage of Chairman Mao to make Yan'an, the Taiping Army might have won.

Yang Xiuqing is the soul of the Taiping Army, Shi Dakai and other fierce generals were invincible when he led the Taiping Army, and after Yang Xiuqing died in internal strife, Yang Xiuqing's position was irreplaceable, so that Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng, the backbone of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the later period, were lonely and brave in their own battles, and Shi Dakai left the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom after he lost his spirituality, which shows the importance of Yang Xiuqing.

There are many reasons for the failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but Yang Xiuqing's death is the most deadly, Yang Xiuqing is the key figure in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, only Yang Xiuqing leads the whole army, Shi Dakai is the winged king who wins all battles, but unfortunately Hong Xiuquan is not a hero who takes care of the overall situation, but it is a pity that Yang Xiuqing is a pearl of talent secretly cast.